


O Best-Beloved

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: One Cannot Watch One's Footing [2]
Category: Amelia Peabody - Elizabeth Peters, Primeval
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 22:47:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3226358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amelia's great-great-granddaughter contemplates the past and the future, by way of her favourite bedtime stories: Fifty Years in Egypt, 1884-1934, by David John Emerson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	O Best-Beloved

**Author's Note:**

> For trope_bingo square ‘futurefic’, relying heavily on the previous crossover square, for which the fic is Catastrophically Precocious. You might want to read that before you read this! Title is Kipling, from How The Elephant Got His Trunk.

            “Got you,” Claudia muttered, pulling the battered hardback book from the obscure bottom shelf it had been hidden on, mouldering away in her unused childhood bedroom. Her parents put guests in here sometimes, but generally preferred to offer them the other guest room, which had been her sister Minerva’s and was slightly larger and significantly lighter. It didn’t have such a nice view, though. And it certainly didn’t have all Claudia’s old favourite books, the ones that didn’t fit in their tiny flat.

 

            A thought struck her as she traced the book’s embossed cloth-covered binding with one delicate finger. She was moving anyway, since they’d conceded that even the most picturesque small flat wouldn’t hold the two of them _and_ a child - surely there would be room in the new house for a cardboard box of books? Even if the baby things would take up immense amounts of space and Tom would probably acquire new sports and outdoors kit to fill that which remained. 

 

            Maybe. Claudia dismissed the idea as temporarily irrelevant and examined the book she’d picked out more closely. It was old, very old, and the spidery ink writing on the flyleaf wasn’t hers: it read _Charlotte Forth Emerson, 1937_ , then _Hero Emerson Faraday, 1950_ , and finally, _Minerva and Claudia Faraday Brown, 1987_. Charlotte Faraday, née Emerson, had died not long after inscribing the book to her granddaughters, although she’d been reading aloud tales from it to all her grandchildren on special occasions for several years. She had a pin-sharp memory into her seventies, and a gift for mimicry. She could do the voices for the characters and you would feel as if you were hearing all the Victorian and Edwardian characters who had lived and laughed and loved and excavated and fought across half the Middle East, casually apprehending criminals and publishing their work in the off-season. For Claudia and for every member of her extended family that she knew, they lived again in the silent pages of David John Forth Emerson’s privately published (for fear of libel cases, particularly when it came to the elder Emersons’ pungently expressed views on Howard Carter) family memoir.

 

            Claudia was flung abruptly backwards into her childhood memories, sitting on Nana Charla’s feet and examining the engraved illustrations – done from David Todros’ own sketches – while Nana Charla read aloud and Grandpa Davy sulked in a corner. He had meant his tales to be serious history; there was an extensive bibliography and timeline in the back of the book, not to mention several meticulous maps. But Grandpa Davy being cross about something was part of the tapestry of a family Christmas, woven in with pudding and turkey and presents. He had been permanently cross since his last trip to Egypt, which Claudia wasn’t old enough to remember. Claudia understood it had something to do with seriously annoying a dictator and being obliged to escape under cover of darkness, which was entirely typical of the swashbuckling side of the Emerson family. They were all still slightly disappointed in her for not pursuing archaeology the way her sister Minerva had done – and even Minerva was slightly disreputable because she, like their parents, favoured Romans over Egyptians – but Claudia really felt that when it came to swashbuckling, she’d outdone them all.

 

            With the possible exception of Ramses. She flipped idly over the pages, seeking out the illustrations since she didn’t have time to get lost in the stories, and found Ramses fighting back-to-back with his blood brother David in a police raid on a drugs ring, Ramses riding hard alongside his father through the desert, Ramses fighting a knife-wielding man bare-handed while his wife Nefret looked on.  Claudia noticed that Nefret Emerson had been provided with a knife that strongly resembled a surgical scalpel; she was sure this wasn’t in the original sketch or the original story, but from what she knew of her great-grandmother, it was entirely in character. There was even a drawing of Ramses from his childhood, peering over the edge of a pitfall in a pyramid, holding a candle aloft and covered in the most revolting muck. His parents were inside the pit: Amelia wore an expression of profound exasperation and Radcliffe looked thrilled.

 

            Claudia looked at that one for a while longer than the others: it was from this, and a couple of early, indistinct photographs from fragile newspaper cuttings, that she had recognised the boy who’d fallen through an anomaly and proceeded to bore her fiancé and the rest of the anomaly team to death with a lengthy discourse on hieratic. Claudia had had to look up hieratic when she got home, and had realised that it could be described in a single sentence: the cursive, everyday form of hieroglyphics. But if the stories were any guide, Ramses – like his mother, and rather like Grandpa Davy – was prone to complicating things.

 

            She heard a creak of footsteps on the stairs, and turned her head. The door of her bedroom was open; her fiancé came through it, ducking his head to avoid a rather low lintel.

 

            “I always forget how pink this room is,” Tom Ryan said, as he did every time they came here.

 

            “I _like_ pink,” Claudia said, as she did every time they came here. It wasn’t as outrageous as it had been when Claudia was a girl. The pink floral wallpaper had faded and the old carpet had been taken up, replaced by the sanded and polished floorboards and a couple of soft, comfortable rag rugs in a much less offensive shade of pink than the previous fuschia.

 

            Ritual satisfied, Tom sat down beside her and dropped a kiss on her lips, before looking down at the book she was holding. “What’s that?”

 

            Claudia flipped the book shut. _Fifty Years in Egypt, 1884-1934_ , the faded title read. “Family stories,” she said. “I’m going to take it home with us. I thought the baby would like them when it’s old enough, and – they’re good stories.”

 

            Tom nodded, flicking through the book, large hands deceptively careful. “You told me some of the stories.”

 

            “I did,” Claudia said, leaning against Tom. The weak winter light filtered through the dusty windowpanes. Claudia remembered the light streaming through other grimy windows: the windows of Tom’s hospital room, where she had spent long, patient afternoons curled up in a chair beside his bed, telling him stories when he didn’t want to talk, which was most of the time. “Grandpa Davy tells them better. In the book, I mean. He’s been dead for a while now.”

 

            “Mm.” Tom closed the book carefully. “Your family left Egypt?”  


            “Er- mine did. My parents were archaeologists, but they excavated in Europe. There’s still a branch of the family that does Ancient Egypt and uses the old house in Luxor. There’s a stray Vandergelt – Cyrus Vandergelt was the wealthy American dilettante, his son married an Egyptian girl – who still goes out there, I think. The Todroses don’t do archaeology any more, though. I don’t think so, anyway. I don’t know that branch of the family at all, but Dad could tell you.”  


            “Todroses?”

 

            Claudia gathered her thoughts and rearranged them in the most sensible order. “David Todros was the estranged son of Abdullah, the original Emersons’ reis – er, organiser, fixer, foreman. I suppose you could say I’m Lester’s reis. The Emersons engineered a reconciliation, had David educated in Europe, and raised him as a son but didn’t adopt him. He was their actual son’s dearest friend and he eventually married into the family. He was an artist. He drew archaeological objects, sites, reconstructions – and he could make some rather nice reproductions of artefacts, too. There are some in the British Museum.”

 

            “Huh.” Tom drew her onto his lap and put the book back into her hands. “Just so long as you don’t name the sprog Ramses. Or Nefret.”

 

            “I think Nefret is a beautiful name.”

 

            Tom all but hooted with scepticism.

 

            “That was a horrible noise,” Claudia said severely. “And firstly, I accept that it would give any child a complex, secondly, Ramses was only a nickname that stuck, he was actually called Walter –“

 

            “ _Walter_?”

 

            “- yes, I know, and finally, my family runs to classical names, not Egyptian ones.” Claudia rested her head on his shoulder and snuggled into him, lodging her nose under his chin. “I’ve been thinking Julius for a boy and Juno for a girl.”

 

            Tom made a thoughtful noise, hand settling on the slight firm curve of her stomach. “Juno?”

 

            “Queen of the gods,” Claudia supplied.

 

            Tom gave a satisfied grunt, and it occurred to Claudia that it was possible any future daughter of hers would attempt to take over the world, aided and abetted by an indulgent father. Oh, dear. Oh, well, it could be worse. At least that would make Claudia mother of the empress of the world; she didn’t aspire to fill that position, but she felt she could rise to the challenge if called upon to do so.

 

            “Peter was my father’s name,” Tom said, voice completely neutral. “And my grandmother is Gwendolen.”

 

            Claudia refrained from saying that she knew that perfectly well - had visited Peter Ryan’s grave and been politely menaced by Gwen Ryan. She curled a hand into Tom’s jumper and kissed the pulse in his neck instead. “Peter Julius and Juno Gwendolen. I like it.”

 

            “We’re not having twins,” Tom said firmly.

 

            “God forbid,” Claudia muttered, and then said more cheerfully: “But they will like books.”

 

            “Oh yeah?”

 

            “Yes. It’s compulsory. They have to like history, too.” Claudia tucked Davy Emerson’s magnum opus closer against her chest. “We can start with Ancient Egypt. Everyone likes that.” 


End file.
